The kiss breaks. Abel repeats, “Come back to me.” All Noemi can do is nod.
She punches the controls, and the cockpit slides shut. Abel walks backward a few steps as the landing bay door slides open. The cool meadow breezes from outside ruffle his dark gold hair. She stares at him, memorizing every last detail, until the go light flashes on her control panel.
After that, there’s no time for anything but the fight.
34
ABEL SUSPECTS NOEMI WOULD’VE PREFERRED TO HAVE been told that he intends to fly into battle, too. If she objects later, he’ll point out that he did mention the possibility of the Persephone going into combat….
That won’t be the full truth, so he rejects that option. Noemi is more than his friend now; he wishes for her to be the other half of his life. Dishonesty between them is inadvisable on every level. She’ll rage at him, but ultimately she’ll understand. He could no more leave Noemi to go into battle unprotected than she could fail to defend her world.
He takes off immediately, setting course for the Gate. The scene that unfolds on the vast domed viewscreen reveals a battle of such staggering size as Abel has never seen. Earth has sent through twelve Damocles ships, which he reckons to be more than half the Damocles ships in their entire fleet. The rebellious planets of Kismet and Stronghold will soon realize they’re unguarded. This can only be Earth’s final invasion assault.
But Genesis is ready for them.
The Vagabond fleet is assembling itself—haphazardly, in the way of a group of ships never asked to work together before. Still, they’re flying into action, every burst of blaster fire proof of the colony worlds’ pent-up fury at Earth. He sees the Katara in the heart of the action, all weapons firing, Dagmar Krall proving herself again as a leader. A few medical vessels, courtesy of Remedy, hover nearby to treat the wounded—of which there will be many.
Genesis has sent its ships up, too, though they are less impressive. The age of the vessels is dispiriting, as is their relative state of disrepair. But then one of the older ships fires, hitting a Damocles and rupturing a solid fourth of its hull. Abel reminds himself, Old is not the same as weak.
Amid green streaks of blaster bolts and the large lumbering ships, he sees his fellow mechs in their star-shaped exosuits emerging from the Damocles ships to attack everyone fighting for Genesis. Queens and Charlies one and all, the mechs fling themselves into the best tactical positions, even if it means they’ll be blown to shards within seconds. They risk themselves without fear. They can kill without guilt and be killed without guilt.
But Abel thinks there might be another way to use them.
There was no time for him to teach Simon Shearer what he needed to know; however, Simon may have been able to teach Abel something.
He brings the Persephone in closer to the battle, until the starfighters and mechs are crisscrossing the space around him in every direction. No Queen or Charlie will pay much attention to an unarmed civilian vessel unless it makes overly hostile moves. Remaining motionless is dangerous mostly because stray weapons fire could hit him. The shields are at full power, which will have to be sufficient protection. Abel’s going to need all his concentration for what he does next.
Simon told Abel that he controlled other mechs by being more machine than human. This is strange to Abel, who’s worked so hard to explore his human side. Letting himself be wholly a machine—it would be the equivalent of telling humans to jump off a cliff, trusting that a force field would catch them. All their faith in the force field wouldn’t make that jump easy. He doesn’t want to surrender his human self, even for an hour.
His memories of Haven crystallize, and he sees the broken, battered mechs attacking him in concert, as if they were the limbs of a single organism. Simon learned how to control them as if they were an extension of his mind. The opportunity before Abel is immense.
So is the danger, but he considers it irrelevant. Compared to the risk to Noemi, what he’s attempting is nothing.
He sits at ops and opens one of the interfaces. Then he withdraws an emergency repair edger and slashes across his wrist, reopening the wound he gave himself on Haven. The injury doesn’t bleed as much as it would for a human, but red drops spatter onto the console. As long as it doesn’t ooze into the wiring, this represents no significant problem.
The metal within Abel has been exposed. Simon hadn’t found such hardwiring necessary; that was one of the few advantages he had. While next generations of Inheritors may have the advantages of greater organic content, Abel thinks with satisfaction, they’ll lack the ability to interface directly with older computer systems, like the one that governs his ship.
He withdraws one long, slender rod and pushes the end into a small port. The effect is instantaneous and overwhelming; the full flood of Persephone’s data rushes around and into him, too much for even his brain to process. But he retains enough self-control to block out one core function area, then another, until he’s eliminated enough to think clearly. That lets him focus on communications.
The signals the ship would normally send aren’t on the same frequencies that tether mechs to their Damocles controls. They are, however, extremely close, and now that Abel’s connected with his ship, he thinks he can push that frequency to exactly the right level. Shutting his eyes, he concentrates. The effort feels like static electricity crackling around his brain—
WE ARE HERE.
Abel’s eyes open wide as he connects to every mech fighting for Earth. At first it’s the same overload as when he initially connected to the Persephone, plus nearly five thousand.
